A happy July week to all of you! So, as we enter into the lull of the summer I present to you some choice Echinoblog image and video picks from various image streams that show off one the internet's most frequently photographed sea urchins! The diadematid ASTROPYGA!

Astropyga also appears to have a rather painful array of spines but I'm unsure if these pack quite the toxic wallop that Asthenosoma does..

Astropyga includes four known species, one in the tropical East Pacific and another in the Indo-Pacific and two in the tropical Atlantic. All are known to occur primarily from relatively shallow to mesophotic depths as we saw recently on a Bishop Museum expedition to the "Twilight Zone" (here)

But even within the widely occurring Indo-Pacific species. A. radiata there appears to be quite a bit of color variation from the dark colors seen below to the lighter ones like this

The genus name can be broken down to "Astro" meaning star and "pyga" which refers to rump or buttocks.. so the name literally translates to "Star Butt"!!.

Why? Well, you see this giant bulb on the surface? That's an extension of the intestine called the anal sac. That's where the POOP comes out! I've talked about that here. So, basically some wry taxonomist looked at the anal sac and the pentagonal symmetry and decided "yes. The STAR ASS!"

Flickr and Youtube are GREAT for picking up on natural history observations. Yes, there's always the lack of scientific rigor but sometimes divers just make simple observations. And THAT can be the start of knowledge.

All the images below are probably A. radiata from the Indo-Pacific.

Astropyga scavenging on dead fish!(Lembeh)Based on a round up of papers I could locate, A. radiata has been reported primarily as a scavengers, feeding on algal debris and other stuff from sediments, etc. But if this image is accurate (and not posed) they occasionally much on dead fish as well. This is actually consistent with other sea urchin feeding habits, so I feel comfortable in presenting it here..

Blue Iridescent Spots! Its been speculated that these are photoreceptors but they've not been tested and its unclear exactly what their function is.. But they immediately stick out when observed on an otherwise bright red sea urchin!

Spawning!This speaks for itself.As with other echinoderms I've shown here (such as the sea cucumbers) just because you see white fluid being emitted its not actually clear what sexes of the species are present. The fluids likely represent BOTH sperm AND eggs.

Sometimes this species form large aggregations, which are most likely to help facilitate their reproduction and sexy time!

Astropyga moves surprisingly quickly!While I haven't actually seen one of these alive and close up, its pretty clear that even for sea urchins they are capable of a surprisingly brisk sprints! and across some unusual terrains to boot! That's quite a lot of coordination of spines and tube feet at play..

here's a bunch of them in what looks like a mating aggregation, moving en masse!

Sea urchins are basically big spiny balls that seldom move and surprise! surprise! There never seems to be a shortage of OTHER, smaller animals that can take advantage of this as "habitat."

Crab Commensals! These don't seem to be as bad as the crabs on Asthenosoma, (the proper fire urchins) simply because these don't seem to "dig" themselves into the urchin surface. Spines on Astropyga seem long enough to provide adequate protection as-is...

and vice versa?? Probably one of the most unusual things I've seen imaged by divers since Flickr and YouTube became a thing has been this.. Crabs in the family Dorippidae that PICK UP urchins, sea anemones and carry them on their carapace in order to use them as sort of a defense as they walk along the sea bottom.

Today as I was scrolling through the many years of posts I realized that I have NEVER written about the Crown of Thorns starfish, Acanthaster planci! If you don't live in the Indo-Pacific you might not realize that this is actually one of the most heavily studied starfish in the world! There are whole BOOKS written just about the biology and ecology of this single starfish species!

Why? What makes this species so important?

This starfish is a voracious coral predator! It just extends its stomach onto the fleshy tissue of a "hard coral" (i.e. scleractinian) and a little while later, only the "cleaned" skeleton of the coral remains!

If it was a reasonable number of these animals feeding on coral, it would actually be healthy for the ecosystem. Predators control community structure and are important to ecosystem function..

The thing is though that this species, for reasons which have been studied since the 1960s, have undergone sporadic and localized HUGE population explosions! Their incredible abundance results in the wholesale LOSS of complete coral reefs!

Image from Wikipedia, taken by Jon Hanson, in Thailand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown-of-thorns_starfish#/media/File:Crown_of_Thorns-jonhanson.jpg

Here's the thing though. In spite of all the hate that gets laid on these animals.. I STILL think they are kind of freakin' AMAZING!

So, today, I thought I would exploit the wonderous world of Flickr and show off some of these spectacular macro shots displaying the surreal surface of these animals...

The crown of thorns occurs across a WIDE range. From Baja California to Hawaii and Japan and then down to the east coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. The range of colors is similarly vast! Its not entirely clear if these might represent separate species or perhaps represent some other kind of variation based on the environment. Perhaps food? growth? Difficult to say...

But genetics DOES indicate that there are multiple "cryptic species" across this animal's wide range in the Indo-Pacific..

The big thorny bits are of course, the spines.. the dark dots on the surface are the papulae (or gills) and if you see little white or dark beak like structures, those are called pedicellariae whose function in these animals is not entirely clear... But likely some kind of "in close" defense against parasites or what have you....

and the ANUS of course! That's the dark spot, probably surrounded by spines... this shot is nice because it not only shows off the papulae (the gills) but also the pedicellariae (the red tweezer like structures)

As one finds often time in nature.. you have some big animal with lots of complex surface textures.. so are there animals to take advantage of it! Shrimps often live closely and among the spines on the animals' surface...

here are tiny shrimps.. some in the genus Periclimenes...

And the ORAL surface!Strangely enough, the top surface of Acanthaster is remarkably well known but how many people have actually seen the ORAL surface where the mouth is???

In addition to the tube feet all converging at the mouth, you also see the oral spines projecting into the mouth itself!

and in this one, you can actually see some of the cardiac stomach below the purple spines...

And a video to top it all off!

At some point, there will be much, much MORE about the Crown of Thorns!

My first exposure to LIVING Hymenaster was back in 2001 when I was working with Craig Young on an expedition to study glass sponges in the Hawaiian Islands (see pic above)

I got an opportunity to collect a bunch of deep-sea asteroids at that time and saw my FIRST deep-sea slime star!!

and a few minutes after, I discovered for the first time that, just like their shallow-water cousins, Hymenaster could emit mucus just as effectively!! In other words SLIME!

Image by H. Reiswig.

Hymenaster is a WEIRD animal. The entire surface has evolved into a strange soft covering, This varies in different species. In some the body is membranous and kind of leathery, others, sometimes soft and in others, almost completely gelatinous. In those latter gelatinous species, almost the entire body, save for the tube foot grooves, mouth frame and various other structures are nearly all soft and squishy. Very little in the way of "hard parts"

The name Hymenaster translates from the Greek into "Hymen" and "aster" or "Membrane Star" which as we shall see is pretty fitting.

The body is almost transparent. You can see the five radiating tube foot grooves plus the mouth and some spines and etc. in the surface areas which you can sort of see through.

Hymenaster sp. from Maro Crater (Hawaiian Islands)

Hymenaster's translucent body draws an analogous comparison with many deep-sea sea cucumbers such as this one observed at 4800 m in the Hawaiian Islands... So perhaps there is an adaptive advantage to having this gelatinous body wall?

Hymenaster occurs all throughout the world: Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, Indian and Antarctic (i.e. the Southern) Ocean. The genus includes approximately 60 species.

The problem with many of these deep-sea pictures is that the diagnostic characters used to ID them are from characters that are either on the underside, along the tube foot grooves or actually INSIDE the body. Color, shape and surface texture all seem to vary..so it can be difficult to "nail down" which species is which..

Unfortunately, these animals don't hold up well after collection. Here's one after the delicate touch of a robot submersible. Think about what what a delicate animal like this looks like AFTER a trawl net has dragged it for about an hour on the sea bottom!

It depends on the species of course, some of the tougher species are pretty tough. This one looks like its in pretty good shape. Still weird but the features are all there...

One of the most complicated aspects of studying these animals is "matching up" the examined, often damaged specimens from above with the living animals. And lately there have been a LOT of images of living animals!

There is nearly NOTHING known about the biology of these animals. What do they eat? What is the slime used for? What is the gelatin-like body an adaptation for? Where do the species live? Are they separated by depth? How have they evolved?

ALL of the observations below have screengrabs via the Okeanos Explorer program!!

PACIFIC OBSERVATIONSThe deep Pacific is a VAST area. Images below are mostly from North Pacific observations..undoubtedly there remain many MORE species further south.

A Pink One from the southern region of "Bank 9" in the Hawaiian Islands region

here was an ENORMOUS one from the Hawaiian Okeanos that was HUGE about 20 cm across!

This one nicely illustrates the osculum, which is that big center hole on the surface which is how water enters the cavity surrounding the body surface thus bringing water/gases to the papulae (i.e. the gills) within.. It gave us a nice show with its opening and closing osculum!

This is what I previously identified for HURL as H. pentagonalis..but it doesn't seem to match the orange one at the top of the post above in terms of color or texture. So, possibly something else.

From East Necker Seamount in the Hawaiian Islands region. A different color from H. pentagonalis.

and yet ANOTHER Hymenaster species (I think??) from Salmon Bank in the Hawaiian region. White with flyffy surface texture!

A recent image of Hymenaster sp. from McDonnell Guyot in the Wake Island region. Same genus but the surface texture is VERY different..

Here is yet ANOTHER species from Barkley Canyon off British Columbia.. Again, very different body shape, surface texture and color..

ATLANTIC OBSERVATIONSIts also entirely POSSIBLE that SOME of these Atlantic species might actually be the SAME ones as the Pacific ones.. There are some similarities below with the ones above..

From Puerto Rico

From Atlantis II Seamount (North Atlantic)

From the Atlantic, Mytilus Seamount (via Okeanos). On top of everything else, the surface membrane is "ballooned" up... which is more mysterious behavior.

From Physalia Seamount (North Atlantic). Honestly, this one might be something else entirely. The surface texture is unusual.

These were all taken from images on Flickr, and so the original photographers can be found merely by rolling over the image itself. What's great about them, is that the images were taken from LIVING animals, and so their colors remain vibrant! Nothing here is photoshopped.

GREETINGS! And my apologies for the long silence over the last few weeks: a little bit of time to recharge the batteries and a little bit of frantic insanity as the fall began! So, this week I am back!

There's been a fair amount of news about taxonomy lately, so I thought I would embellish with some "behind the scenes" knowledge that might not have been evident simply from the news reports themselves...

Scientific Names vs. Common or Popular Names: What's Required

Just so that we're all on the same page, here's some general information about the naming of new species.

There are actually a set of internationally recognized CODES (i.e. rules) for describing species and governing their use. These codes are overseen by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (here) and although they are not much more than a regulatory organization, they do try to keep everything from going taxonomic kablooey!

Basically, it is these rules that dictate HOW a lot of organisms in the world get scientific names. So, simply SAYING that a new organism is called "A blue Baboo Fish" won't cut it. It actually has to be supported by evidence and published in a PEER-REVIEWED journal and given a proper scientific name in the proper format (in Latin, etc.). ONLY THEN is such a name considered valid.

BUT a number of other rules are also at play in order to keep the process of naming new species orderly...Nomen Nudum aka Why we don't know the name of the President's Fish (yet!)Have you ever noticed that there's often a significant time lag between the time someone ANNOUNCES that they have DISCOVERED a new species and the time that new species is ACTUALLY described??

That's because the name is not "official" until it is actually published in a scientific journal. If for some reason, the name is actually published before the proper scientific documentation is released to accompany it, the name becomes what is called a nomen nudum which is Latin for "naked name."

Note that while some accounts actually went so far as to cite the genus name (Tosanoides) nowhere will you find the FULL name until its published in the literature. Is it a liberal conspiracy? NOPE. Its Taxonomy!

If they actually announced the full species it would create a nomen nudum, which is kind of like the taxonomic equivalent of a time-space anomaly from Star Trek. That means there's a proper scientific name flying around WITHOUT a proper scientific description.

When written out completely, the full format of valid scientific names display a reference to the original author and date of the paper which described it. Thus, the full name of one of my species"Circeaster arandae Mah 2006" refers to a paper in 2006 in which I described the species Circeaster arandae.

Getting back to the nomen nudum however, Note that this does not necessarily invalidate the name. But it does open the name up for other unscrupulous (or unknowing) individuals to inadvertently use the name, thus "taking away" the name from the author's original intent. (or in the worst case, stealing the name from the original author).Another real example...You might have seen this little guy for example. A new species of dumbo octopus that one of my colleagues Stephanie Bush is working on out at MBARI/Monterey Bay Aquarium.

In an interview she alluded to the fact that the animal is SO cute that she might call it "adorabilis." She called it that informally as part of an interview but the media took the name and pretty much made it stick.

SO many news outlets have now used this name that it has turned up everywhere..but it has NOT been described or published in a scientific journal as of this date (Sept. 2016). This is not strictly a nomen nudum but conceivably, someone might mistakenly cite it in a scientific journal somewhere.

If that happens, then BOOM. It has entered the literature. This still does not mean that Dr. Bush cannot use the name..but it DOES mean that if someone else happens to use the species name "Opisthoteuthis adorabilis" that will "steal" the name away from her because ANOTHER scientist will have justified a species using that name in compliance with the ICZN code..

If by chance the name was published TWICE and in proper compliance by BOTH authors then a new situation arises. In that case the name published first has priority... A great segue into a discussion of SYNONYMY...

Synonymy aka Why you have to be careful if you "bought" a new species

Probably one of the most important of the codes in the ICZN is that of "priority" which basically states that the OLDEST (i.e. the FIRST) name established for a species is the correct one. All subsequent names of the SAME species are essentially considered redundant and their use is suppressed once that assessment is made (but there are exceptions on occasion-better explained at another time).

That seems pretty straightforward. But in truth, it can get pretty unfairly brutal.

There's a LOT of new species that are named in "good faith", sometimes even with very strong data that for whatever reason are ultimately deemed to be "redundant" and are suppressed in the literature.

So that means if someone described a new species with a shoddy (or in some cases, almost NO details) description-but it was ADEQUATE, followed by a second description that was just an objectively BETTER account, that FIRST author gets credit and the other species get put into the list of "redundant names" aka the synonymy.

So, someone who is NOT a scientist can easily get the rights to name a new species or even name a new species AFTER you as a gift....but its always possible that the name you give it, whether your own or someone else's, could eventually be synonymized by another person in the future because of some unknown specimen or just better understanding of the species in the future.

Now, granted, there tends to be LESS of a chance of that happening depending on how much work the scientist doing the work has done and depending on what kind of data supported that new species in the first place, especially with molecular data.

But its STILL possible, sometimes even if nothing was done wrong... Science is an ongoing process and although taxonomy has kind of a reputation for being a bit stogy the truth is that it IS quite dynamic and taxonomic changes are common place (much to the annoyance of those who use species names!)

A question that came up recently from my last Okeanos round, was whether or not a new species could be described ONLY from a picture or video rather than a specimen???

Uh.. No and yes.

For MOST (nearly all) cases, some kind of voucher is necessary. Why? Because we require EVIDENCE to describe a new species. Measurements. Observations of the skeletal (or non-skeletal) structure. Analysis of different features. DNA. Any one of thousands of kinds of data which permit us to carefully contrast the known species of organisms from one another.

At the very least, a specimen must be examined so that we can carefully discern why its gross morphology is different from other similar species. These specimens are conserved. They are saved in museums for future generations to reference and retained for hundreds of years.

HOWEVER. In some RARE instances, there IS an allowance for new species to be described ONLY from a picture. It used to be invoked for exceptional cases-rare and endangered species for example.

We live in an era with increasingly high-resolution imagery, sometimes SO good that even the minutest details can be made out without physical examination. Millions of images of a biodiversity survey can be brought back on a drive the size of a large coin.

The conservative scientific approach in publications would be to indicate it IS a new species but without a proper name (e.g., Octopus n. sp. 1)

BUT it can't be properly characterized because a LOT of octopus characters are internal and require direct comparison (unlike the South African bee example above which COULD be identified and characterized).

Also, while unlikely, its POSSIBLE that there is a specimen of this animal somewhere in a museum somewhere in the world which has already been published. Without reconciliation of all these disparate factors, one risks creating redundant names which are essentially permanent and creating possible confusion.

Thus, identifying a species directly from ONLY a picture would be more direct but not as thorough and does not give us enough data to properly assess it. But yes, there are exceptions.

Identifying species only from pictures also invites the possibility of abuse and reckless taxonomy which could impede and hopelessly confuse the work of legitimate scientists during a time when there is a dire need for workers to be be studying Earth's biodiversity...

Species named after celebrities & pop culture? What's up with that?

from http://novataxa.blogspot.com/2012/10/2012-yoda-acorn-worm.html

Scientific names as outlined in the Zoological codes are always supposed to be in Latin. A dead language that nobody speaks any longer. This used to be a scholarly language that was widely used among educated people.

Most scientific names are based on descriptive terminology. So, for example, the name Acanthaster , which is the scientific name of the Crown of Thorns starfish (learn more about this genus here),literally translates into "thorny star" from the Greek acanth- and the Latin -aster meaning star. Many of these names were sort of an open book...

Although you would think that naming a genus would be better than a species (because a genus is higher up in the taxonomic hierarchy), in fact, its not. Higher level names tend to be made into synonymies more frequently than species. Species tend to stick around for quite awhile longer..

As we have gotten into the 20th and 21st Century however, we NOW see increasingly the role of pop culture influencing taxonomists! There are a number of reasons: Some think it makes taxonomy more relatable, some have found genuine inspiration from popular entertainment, others have many MANY species and have just "run out" of Latin names.. an endless list from a huge pool of scientists.

Sometimes the people/characters as names are directly influential! As with Yoda above. the genital flaps of that acorn worm (an enteropneust) were VERY reminiscent of Star Wars Jedi Master Yoda! The ICZN is actually surprisingly flexible in allowing for "translating" terms into taxonomic names... And hence its namesake! From a character created in the late 20th Century into an ancient dead language! No problem! (if you know how)

Taxonomists are diverse. No longer done by ONLY classic stodgy, out of touch scientists-but hip, trendy nerds as well! .. it is done by many students and dynamic individuals who follow popular trends.. and we will likely see more and MORE of these pop culture names in the future....

thanks to Monica M. who asked me the question about Obama's fish! that inspired this post.

Here's some video to give you an idea of what it looks like/how it moves, etc. (I would watch without sound to enjoy the zen of the animal)

IF the name doesn't sound familiar, the animal's distinctive appearance definitely stays glued in your head after you've seen one! Imagine a big blobby sea cucumber with what looks to be a HUGE LOBE sticking out of its hind end!

Note the image above contrasted to this diagram showing mouth (top) and anus end (with lobe-bottom).

The genus Psychropotes is derived from the Greek for Psychros which means "cold or frigid" and "potes" which honestly, I could not find a definitive translation for... One root translated to "flight"? possibly alluding to the ability of this species to swim...And another colleague tells me it might mean "dweller". Ah well, one mystery at a time!!

Psychropotes includes 11 species which occur widely, all around the world in the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Southern (but not in the Arctic) oceans in the deep abyss of the world's oceans! That means roughly 2000 to 6000m. They are the deepest of the deep! Considered "classic" deep-sea inhabitants they were collected and described from the HMS Challenger's historic mission.

These can be pretty BIG animals!! as this image from a recent MBARI expedition demonstrates. (with deep-sea biologist Greg Rouse for scale!)

From MBARI https://twitter.com/sarahkeartes/status/593979334056022016

But there is ONE species in particular, P. longicauda (the species name "longi-" means long and "caudex" refers to 'trunk or stem" and alludes to the posterior lobe in the same way that caudal fin refers to the end of a fish) that is of interest.

Individuals all identified as this species, P. longicauda have been observed from oceans all around the world and varies rather widely in many ways. Sea cucumber species are identified based on tiny calcite bits called sclerites which seem to be highly variable.. with differences in sclerite shape varying between different regions. But do all of these differences amount to different species? Or variation within ONE species??

Here for example was one seen from the recent tropical Pacific Okeanos Explorer cruises. Note that the "lobe" is a different shape. Separate species? Damage?

This turns out to be a pretty important question to deep-sea biologists. Can there be ONE species present at such a huge scale? Or are there species present that are CRYPTIC or hidden from us by body characteristics alone???

Note the one above with the shorter, forked "lobe" Is it the SAME species as the purple one shown earlier? Is this variation? (such as what we might see in humans who live in different parts of the world) Or are these separate species?

Their study explored the widespread occurrence of this species based on 128 specimens of Psychropotes longicauda collected from THREE different oceans over a 34 year period, from 1977 to 2011!

This represented an INTERNATONAL team of experts from not only the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom but also the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology in Russia, the American Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), Scripps Institute of Oceanography and many, others!!

They sampled tissue for two genetic markers (COI and 16S for those who need to know) across all the sampled individuals in order to compare populations from all around the world.

The Global Colors of Psychropotes!

So, here's the result. Scientists use diagrams to show a basic outline of relationships between different populations. Roughly speaking, the greater the distance between the circles the larger the distance between the populations and the greater chance they are separate species...

In the first diagram, the LARGER the circle, the larger the sample size. So the bigger circle represents the largest number of samples. Which were all from the Atlantic Ocean.

Note the helpful color key so you can tell apart the populations you are seeing below:

Dark Blue= North Atlantic (east)

Light Blue= North Atlantic (west)

Yellow= South Indian Ocean

Green= South Atlantic

Red= Northeast Pacific

Dark Purple= Northwest Pacific

Pink= South Pacific

Their figure 2 here shows what is basically the number of "steps" away from one another each population happens to be... The size of each circle represents the sample size. The big patch of BLUE reflects the LARGE sample of ATLANTIC specimens..but note how they are all clustered together.

Some closer, some farther away.. This means they are all more closely related to one another than to those the others. But note how many different subgroups are present away from the big blue circle in the middle? That suggests lots of

The Red (Northeast and Northwest Pacific) therefore seem to display a somewhat closer relationship to those in the North Atlantic than to those in the Southern hemisphere (yellow, green, pink, etc.)

Figure 2 from Gubili et al. 2016

Their figure 3 below, shows all of the populations in more of a "family tree" (i.e. phylogenetic) perspective..so, not only do we see that all of the Atlantic and Pacific members are "close" but they all occur on a single lineage, which means they were all MUCH more closely related

Two major lineages are most evident in the phylogenetic tree below, Lineages 1 and 2 each with subgroups: Lin 1A, Lin 1B and Lin 2A and 2B, respectively.

The pattern is kind of unclear..but there's definitely an Atlantic cluster (Lineage 2) with members that occur in the Indian and Pacific but this seems very separate from the Lineage 1 which seems to include members from all over, including the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific.

Figure 3 from Ghibili et al.

Ultimately, the two lineages (Lineages 1 and 2) showed > 5% divergence from one another. When compared with other echinoderm species, that much population genetic divergence is enough to recognize a separate species (as opposed to simply a population with structure).

So, YES. One lineage, is the "proper"Psychropotes longicauda species, but there's at LEAST one more which has been "hidden" by the taxonomic definition of Psychropotes longicauda. That is, they all LOOK like the described species but in fact, the differences are FAR more subtle than we had previously recognized! More diversity (i.e., further species) will likely be discovered as more data is collected..

Some of these further subgroups will be so-called "cryptic species" because morphology does not immediately distinguish them. Thus, their status as species is "hidden" by external morphology (but subsequently discovered by genetics). But now that we are looking, many, MANY more characters that could help distinguish these species could conceivably be discovered.

Other Interesting Observations/Questions..

One interesting factoid was that Psychropotes, and many other deep-sea sea cucumbers only occur in areas of high productivity (i.e. marine snow). Could these nutrient rich regions be related to speciation? and diversity within the species?

The authors were able to note changes in the genetic diversity and abundance of the Atlantic lineage across a temporal series! Based on the extensive collections at the National Oceanography Collection at Southampton University, they they observed an uptick in the abundance of small individuals but also a change in the amount of genetic diversity in relation to an increase in organic flux called the "Amperima Event" in 1996!

They found that there were MORE individuals which belonged to the "Atlantic population" and fewer of those which shoed affinities to other oceans. This might explain why the Atlantic "genetic type" was so well established. They cautioned that although they didn't have enough of a dataset to show changes over time, they DID say that there WERE changes in the genetic makeup related to the nutrient availability.

That is a pretty snazzy thing to record from a collection of deep-sea sea cucumbers!

Is there an Antarctic origin for Psychropotes longicauda?

The authors argue that the combination of Southern Indian Ocean lineages was consistent with other hypotheses arguing for an Antarctic origin for this widely occurring deep-sea sea cucumber.

Repeated colonization events from the Antarctic via the Southern Indian Ocean (yellow colored in the figures above) might explain the many lineages of Psychropotes present throughout the world's oceans as well as the presence of multiple lineages of Indian Ocean Psychropotes versus the derived and consistent clustering of Atlantic and Pacific populations.

(Coincidentally this picture of a Southern Atlantic Psychropotes is yellow!! )

http://archives.starbulletin.com/2007/06/24/news/story02.html

What further mysteries does Psychropotes have in store? I anxiously await the next paper! ....now if I could only figure out what the "potes" part of Psychropotes means!

And just because, here are some FANTASTIC Psychropotes Bonuses!

Here was an AWESOME Psychropotes cake by Elizabeth Ross, one of the authors of the study...

This week. Something a little different. I was doing a short presentation for some colleagues about using social media next week and I began accumulating Invertebrate Zoology accounts on Twitter... which at one time were quite rare and realized that it would be a good thing to share all of them.

It surprised me that SO MANY have since become established. I remember many years ago when it was less than 6 people and most of it was secondary to blogging!

Now, not ONLY are there many, MANY IZ Twitter themed accounts specializing on specific taxa, there are actually REGULAR twitter events...

So, here we go. All said and done a list of about 65 IZ twitter accoutns! A list of all the accounts I could locate which focused primarily on Invertebrates, exclusive of insects and arachnids. Yes, sorry land-based arthropods but you are a whole thing all on your own.

This will be a fairly subjective list-I focused mainly on marine groups and those with academic or otherwise focused content that I thought was appropriate. Activity was also a consideration. Some accounts looked essentially inactive and were not included.

Let me clear that there are a LOT of accounts which have a broader focus that regularly include Invertebrate Zoology themed tweets, including aquariums, natural history museums, etc. and frankly those have so many followers its unnecessary to give them much more publicity anyway..

There were MANY, many individual accounts of photographers, naturalists, educators, scientists, etc. who for one reason or another I just couldn't include for the sake of space, focus, etc.

And there are some topics, for example about coral reefs, there's a TON of coral-related accounts and I simply could not list them all... A search on Twitter's search engine will get you all of those names pretty quickly though.

So, please don't take an omission as an offense. In fact, if you've got an IZ twitter account that you'd like me to know about, please let me know and if I think its appropriate, I'd be happy to include it.

You may recall back in 2009 when I accompanied the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) on a 10 day cruise exploring the North Pacific on the Juan de Fuca and Gorda Mid Ocean Ridges off the Oregon coast.Here was the cruise website.I blogged about it here.

When we returned from the expedition I was VERY excited because we had collected MANY specimens and several were either new records of rarely seen species or outright NEW species!

One of my favorite undiscovered starfish was this one, Paulasterias macclaini which I had to describe a whole FAMILY and genus in order to accommodate it! This species was named for Dr. Craig Macclain, at Deep-Sea News, who had invited me on the cruise.

The starfish I reported on in my Zootaxa paper are members of the Goniasteridae, the most diverse family of sea stars, which includes over 260 species in 65 genera! Most goniasterids live in relatively deep-water (continental shelf and deeper) but historically, there haven't been many of them known from abyssal and lower bathyal (i.e., >1000 meter) depths.

Only recently have we been seeing better collections of these animals from these depths. As I've reported below, some were collected from below 4000 meters!

Sibogaster nieseni! The first few specimens of this species were collected by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute from Taney Seamount (off the coast of San Francisco) from abyssal depths (over 3000 meters!).

It is named for one of my former advisors from San Francisco State University: Professor Tom Niesen (now emeritus)! Author of the Marine Biology Coloring book and noted intertidal naturalist/ecologist along the California coast!

He gave me my first shot at grad school and happily, his advice and instincts correctly guided me through my early years as a Masters degree student!

photo by J. Sharei

It seemed VERY appropriate to name this species, from off central California, after someone who has done so much to educate others about the significance of the invertebrates of the coast!!

Interestingly, as I was in the process of writing it up, I suddenly became aware of multiple specimens of similar individuals from OTHER oceans in museums where I was NOT expecting to see them!

This one for example, turned out to be almost identical to the Pacific one I was working on but was from the tropical ATLANTIC! and even one from the deeps of Indonesia...

Also, unusual is how, such a moderately big animal (about 4 to 5 inches in diameter) could have gone undescribed for so long? But given how deep it was found (2100 to 4175 meters !) its been well "hidden"!

I spent many a day sorting deep-sea invertebrates on the deck of the Point Sur and I was saddened to hear about its retirement.

Bathyceramaster careyi! New genus and NEW species!

Figuring this one out required a bit of detective work, as it turns out...

Several years ago when I was working as a technician for the California Academy of Sciences, I had the pleasure of studying a newly deposited collection of deep-sea starfishes from Oregon State University.

It turned out, that one of the species in the collection was a rarely known species called "Mediaster elegans" collected by oceanographer Drew Carey. To the best of the knowledge of the workers at the time, it was thought that this was a new occurrence, since the original specimens were only known from South America (collected in 1905).

But as it turns out, after comparing Carey's specimens with the newly collected material by MBARI AND the original type series (i.e., the specimens on which the species was based) it turned out there were actually TWO species present, "Mediaster elegans" (original name) AND this one! And the one seen by Carey in 1972 was actually undescribed! So, what I'd argue was actually "Mediaster elegans" turns has not actually been seen until now...

and not only that, it had to be placed into a new GENUS in order to be correctly described!

Boom! NEW genus described! New SPECIES described!

This species was ultimately found to occur throughout the North Pacific between 1700 and 3363 meter depths!

With this one, named for Dr. Andrew Carey, formerly of Oregon State University!

The gut contents described by Carey's paper in 1972 suggests that this species feeds on deep-sea sponges.

The paper outlines several goniasterids from the North Pacific at depths below 1000 meters, including several which have not been seen since their description.

Now that the new genus Bathyceramaster has been described, I can also follow up with a note I made on one of the recent Okeanos dives to Wake Island!

This white goniasterid we saw at about 2000 m MIGHT be Bathyceramaster, but I'd need to more closely examine the surface to be sure. But if the closeups of the surface texture were correct.. I think maybe??

New discoveries that lead to new questions!!

What are they eating down there? How do they get so big? Why do some of these species always seem to be alone when you see them?

My thanks to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the California Academy of Sciences' Department of Invertebrate Zoology and the Museum national d'Historie naturelle in Paris!

But when it comes to "proper" nudibranchs, it turns out that they are mostly, if not entirely, carnivorous! That's right, instead of the image of "delightful little dainty, clowns of the sea" that most people seem to have of nudibranchs, perhaps we should instead think of them as hungry little monsters that chow down on all manner of other animals! Muhahah!

Note: this image probably does not accurately represent the feeding biology of dorid nudibranchs

Food and feeding in nudibranchs appears to be diverse. But like most snails, nudibranchs feed using what's called a radula, which is a belt-like structure which is modified from taxon to taxon to rasp or else assist in food or prey capture.

Some microscope images of nudibranch radula are below (images by Jeff Goddard)

Nudibranch feeding (and prey) are a HUGE topic and I'm almost certainly NOT capturing the full range. But for your SEASLUGDAY pleasure, here's some great imagery and unusual accounts of what nudibranchs eat...which really does include EVERYTHING.

5. Echinoderms (such as brittle stars)I begin with that most sinister of predatory nudibranch: the echinodermativore! To be sure, the number of sea slugs that are known to feed on echinoderms is a relatively short list-but probably one of the most gorgeous is this Indo-Pacific one: Kalinga ornata!

Here's a GREAT Japanese video of K. ornata below feeding on a brittle star (possibly Ophiocoma scolopendrina?)

3. Bryozoans & various Cnidarians (hydroids, anemones, etc.)! Among the most typical of foods fed upon by nudibranchs are the many, many types of encrusting and/or otherwise sessile animals that live on and around nudibranchs, ranging from small, colonial animals to huge tube-shaped sea anemones! Here's a nice pic, for example, of a dorid nudibranchOnchidoris muircata feeding on a bryozoan colony. Bryozoans aka "lace animals" are a phylum of colonial invertebrates that form very delicate skeletons. They are fairly common in many areas as encrusting, colonial forms.. MANY nudibranch species seem to feed on them...

Not sure which species this is..but you can see they've pretty efficiently cleared off the living tissue from the bryozoan skeleton

This species, Crimora coneja was imaged in Oregon feeding on the bryozoan colony here. You can see the stark white regions around the nudibranch where it has fed, versus the lighter, fuzzier areas around the edges.

Here's a GREAT video of Corambe steinbergae, from the west coast of North America showing this species moving across the bryzoan colony and feeding on the zooids. The nudibranch is even sort of camouflaged so that it appears hidden against the bryozoan colony..

Here's a lovely aeolid nudibranch of some kind feeding on a hydroid. One of the NEAT things about these is that many of these nudibranchs have whats called kelptocnidae which means that these slugs can actually STEAL the stinging cells from the hydroids and transfer them to their OWN body as defense!! You can read more about this here.

And there is much, much more... tunicates are also potential prey for nudibranchs!

As are sponges! In some cases, the nudibranchs can absorb the chemical defenses of the prey and utilize them for their own defense!

When we are looking at big solitary animals.. we enter the realm of animals such as the slug Tritonia and various sea anemones and sea pens... These are pretty significant predators and ellicit a fairly extreme response from they prey... The slugs in the next two videos are quite big 6 to 12 inches long.

AND as long as we are mentioning cnidarians as prey items, here's the pelagic (i.e. swimming) sea slug Glaucus atlanticus feeding on Porpita porpita (blue button jellies)

Here's a bunch of aeolids devouring a fallen Moon Jelly...

2. OTHER NUDIBRANCHSIts always interesting how many people are fascinating not just by predation but "cannibalism" which when applied to the animal world seems to mean when one "type" of animal feeds on the same or similar "type" of animal. (i.e. sea stars that feed on sea stars) and not just one species feeding on itself (as it does in humans).

Its not as common but there are several noteworthy nudibranch predators that feed on OTHER nudibranchs...

The formidible Navanax from the North Pacific for example.. They seem to be quite effiicient at swallowing their prey whole! If these were the size of say, a dog or a wolf we would be VERY afraid of them!

I've always loved the name of this nudibranch. It has a nice ring to it!

Here seen feeding on a bubble snail..

and this one, attacking and COMPLETELY SWALLOWING the sea hare, Aplysia sp.

In the tropical Indo-Pacific, there is another formidable predator, those slugs in the genus Gymnodoris, which as we'll see feed not only on other sea slugs but have progressed up to vertebrates as food!

1. SLUG EAT FISH! This really WAS the most amazing thing to discover. It turns out there's a dorid nudibranch called Gymnodoris nigricolor (name translates into the "black Gymnodoris) which attacks and EATS the FINS of certain FISH!

A hearty BONJOUR from Paris! Where Echinoblog returns to blog from a research trip at the Museum national d'Histoire naturelle!

Yes.. Echinoblog has returned to its yearly soujourn to the City of Lights! My apologies for having been remiss over the last couple of weeks. Between jet lag, research visit activities and how shall we say... "current events" things have been distractingly busy!

I am finishing up my time in Paris..but thought I would leave you with some cool collection/starfish related thoughts, especially as I've had some Star Wars on the brain lately!

A friend of mine pointed out the interesting similarity between the animals I study AND some of the details on everyone's Imperial Planet Killing space station-the Death Star!

For example, the giant offset planet-laser on the Death Star?

DOES seem to show the same kind of off-set position on a starfish! It IS one of the first things you notice about the disk when you look at it!

BUT it DID occur to me that comparing the deadly equatorial trench from the Death Star DOES present a nice analog for sharing some curious characteristic starfish parts that one does not normally think about!

Just to give one a quick frame of reference we are looking of course at TUBE FOOT GROOVES which project AWAY from the mouth

Its normal for the tube foot groove to have defense or other kinds of structures right on the edge of the "trench"

In some groups, we see more... pronounced structures that one might compare with the anti-fighter craft on the Death Star's surface..

and INDEED, there are often tiny, biting animals... crustaceans and sometimes other animals that attack the "soft parts" (i.e., the tube feet) which project from the tube foot groove.

and so yes, there is a bit of a comparison between small rebel attack fighters and annoying little, bitey crustaceans trying to take a bite out of tube feet..

Man the embattlements! Turbo lasers to the defense! Starfish don't QUITE have the anti-X-wing capabilities of the Death Star but what they DO have....

Pedicellariae!Its not QUITE clear what pedicelllariae do however. They look jaw or even clam-shaped, sometimes with numerous teeth on each piece.

SPINES!These look more analogous to "turbo lasers" in that they are extended well off the surface of the starfish's body.

Probably the most obvious part of having all these spines on the tube foot groove is the ability of those spines to CLASP shut. You would think that the Death Star engineers would have come up with something comparable.

and with that.. I'll see all of you back on the other side of the pond!

Greetings! Yes. I have been posting less frequently. Busy with various projects and winter season stuff!

Today's post is a kind of response to a fairly common request I get via email: "Can you help me ID this species of starfish from the Philippines?" (paraphrased)

A question I get from divers, photographers and students who actually live in the Philippines. And strangely enough I get it quite frequently and there are surprisingly few resources to help people with pictures.

In the past I have done variations on this by crowd sourcing images off places like Flickr and YouTube and its been awhile since I've done an "on line field guide." So I thought it would be a good time for another one!

With the exception of Acanthaster brevispinus (above), EVERYTHING below is taken from Flickr and recorded as being from the Philippines by the photographer.

The Philippines has a rich, RICH diversity of sea stars (as well as many, other marine animals) and so this "guide" won't be complete, but it includes several of the most frequently encountered species which are photographed and put on the web. If you are looking for professional taxonomic monography of Philippine sea stars a good place to start is the work of Walter K. Fisher at the Biodiversity Heritage Library. HERE.

There are many, MANY published ID guides to the Indo-Pacific area and I've identified species in many of those books. But these days, images of sea stars and other marine animals are so prolific, it became clear that it really wouldn't take much to curate a collection of these to provide help for people who want to know what the animals were who didn't have expertise to the published accounts..

This species has a distinct hole in the center of the disk called an osculum which allows water into the surface of the disk which is kind of like a circus tent that covers over the ACTUAL surface of the animal underneath (see the blog link above).

Its a species we know very little about. Another species, Euretaster insignis is usually what gets encountered in the Philippines. This image however most resembles E. attenuatus which was first described from New Caledonia. This is possibly a new record!

It varies widely in color and has a huge diversity in appearance. Some are covered with more spines..others with more ganules. Culcita spp. are predators on corals but aren't known to take the huge amount of corals that the Crown of Thorns eats. They are important to ecosystems in that they likely help control the structure of a coral reef based on the species it eats.

Pentacerastertuberculatus:Distinguished by the absence of spines around the lateral edge (on the superomarginal plates), as well as the spines and other armament on the disk.

There seems to be some variation in color as well..

Pentaceraster alveolatus (but close to(P. multispinus) These two species are very poorly distinguished from one another. But both have spines on the superomarginals near the middle to end of the arm (should be few to none interradially) as well as spines on the abactinal surface on the disk.

Color seems to vary for this species...

These are more like Pentaceraster multispinuswith the many, MANY spines present on the disk and along the superomarginal plates (i.e. along the edge).. But they overlap with Pentaceraster alveolatus type things above...

Basically- no spines are present on the edge of the animal (aka the superomarginal plates). P. nodosus is often found in shallow waters around mangroves and on sandy bottoms. They feed on microalgae and other tiny organic nutrients in the sediment.

(note-many of these pictures are artificially arranged for photo shoots! but they are useful for showing diversity. High density like this is not necessarily common)

Ophidiasteridae: This is probably the second most frequently seen group of sea stars other than the Oreasterids..especially the "blue Linckia" which is heavily "fished" by the aquarium and gift/shell trade. Most have long arms and small disks..

Gomophia aegyptiaca A species covered by strongly expressed bumps often with nipple-like tips!

This species occurs widely around the Indo-Pacific, extending into the Indian Ocean with many, MANY color variations. Food, biology, etc. are poorly known.

Linckia guildingi? While this looks to me like Linckia guildingi, the truth is that I'd need to look at the underside to make a positive determination.

Linckia laevigata As I've written about before here, this is one of the most heavily fished sea stars in the Indo-Pacific. Not just for tourist baubles but also for the aquarium trade. Its a handsome species and frequently gets "volunteered" for tourist pictures, beach moments, and aquarium scenes.

There are MANY species. And they are often quite complicated. Even this one with its distinctive tubercles (the bumps) is conceivably part of a broader species complex. To make things even more complicated, you will sometimes see Nardoa species with these big bumps in the genus Gomophia.

Nardoa sp. similar to "N. novaecaledoniae" This one has flattened or at least, MORE flat plates relative to Nardoa frianti (above).

The exact species ID for this animal can't be made from a picture like this because we need to see the underside in order for the precise details. It LOOKS like a species that I would call Nardoa novaecaledoniae but there are several other possibilities. Close up on the underside would be necessary.

Ophidiaster. Here's another species that would require a full specimen (or at least better pictures) to correctly identify. At least one book id'd this as Ophidiaster granifer but I'm not sure that's correct (or incorrect) because there's not enough info...

Mithrodiidae

Thromidia catalae: These are usually MASSIVE starfish. They can get up to 2 feet across! They tend to occur in deeper water (lower end of SCUBA depth).

They have relatively solid surfaces with spiny surfaces. There is relatively little known about their general biology.

Most members of Luidia are 5 armed..but for whatever reason, the ones in the tropics are often BIG and have more than 10 arms!Luidia avicularia?Interesting to see this one since it doesn't usually occur at shallow depths. But the color pattern matches.

Luidia maculata This is a fairly large predatory starfish, often found buried below the surface of the sand.

GoniasteridaeThis is the group that I've done the most work on since I finished my PhD. Some of my recent genetic work has also contributed to the re-classification of two species below (Fromia heffernani and F. monilis) to this family. They had originally been placed in the Ophidiasteridae (above) until my work showed otherwise...

Fromia (formerly Celerina) heffernani (probably) This species and the one below have been the cause of some confusion for many years. Although I'm fairly confident the pictures show the animals correctly identified, the only way to be sure that the species are 100% correctly identified is to look at the UNDERSIDE. I've discussed the problem with these species before in this post (here).

Fromia monilis(probably). Yes. the colors are slightly different.. but when these individuals are preserved they very closely resemble one another making it difficult to tell apart.

ADD to that? The colors can vary.. Yes. it will probably make someone a nice PhD thesis someday...

Iconaster longimanus. A gorgeous species of goniasterid with almost surreal colors and very striking patterns.

We know very little about it.

EchinasteridaeEchinaster callosus I've seen this species often mixed up with Nardoa frianti, above. The big difference is in the texture of the "puffy" structures on the surface. Nardoa's bumps are just that- hard bumps covered by granules.

The surface of Echinaster callosus is covered by a bunch of big colorful puffy pin cushions. The big blobs are soft and each surround a sharp spine. When dead, they often deflate.

Colors are quite pretty and variable...

Echinaster luzonicus This is a distinctive species that is soft to the touch and often displays 6 uneven arms.

Honestly, these are a pain the keister to identify even WITH specimens in hand Working off pictures is often difficult. But there's easily two species that I've observed off Flickr. the most common name encountered is Astropecten polyacanthus, which also happens to be quite variable..but there are a few other species that show similarities and are often overlooked because people don't do the work.

Acanthasteridae Acanthaster planci (or A. cf. solaris). The notorious Crown of Thorns starfish has recently been studied using molecular techniques and revealed to actually be SEVERAL species. The one occurring in the Pacific has been referred to an older name, Acanthaster solaris. But presumably there are still several details to work out..

Acanthaster brevispinus There is actually ANOTHER species of Acanthaster other than the one traditionally identified as A. planci. This one has relatively short spines (hence the name brevispinus).

And yes.. there are many MORE species known.. but for the moment, that's what Flickr gives us!

And a HAPPY NEW 2017 to everyone! Yes. Obviously everyone has noticed the Echinoblog has gone to an "irregular" publication schedule. This is one of those "be careful what you wish for" issues- a lot of museum travel = a lot of new discoveries and thus papers and more work! And so, like a lot of artisan comic books.. I'll be publishing when good topics and/or when the inspiration strikes me.

1. How many different types of Jellyfish species does Ophiocnemis marmorata occur ON??The paper reports at least five or six, including at least 3 species of Rhopilema, Cephea cephea (the cauliflower jellyfish), Netrostoma and Aurelia aurita. But other internet records and social media show further hosts.. such as this hydrozoan, Aequorea from Thailand..

From Chaloklum Diving in Singapore, http://www.chaloklum-diving.com/marine-life-koh-phangan/corals-more-cnidaria/true-jellyfish-scythozoa/scythozoa-other-jellyfish/

Based on their sample of 92 Aurelia aurita, the authors, found that 79% of them (n=73) hosted brittle stars! quite a large number. Most of them were present under the bell or on the "oral arms" (the lobes hanging down from the bell)

Image by Thomas Peschak, https://www.thomaspeschak.com/

The authors observed that brittle stars ranged widely in size (1.0 to 6.0 mm) but MOST had a disk diameter of greater than 3.0 mm. Medusae with MORE brittle stars were LARGER than those medusae without brittle stars.

The largest number of brittle stars recorded (n=14) occurred on a medusae with 155.0 mm bell diameter.

Its also worth noting that the brittle stars stay on the medusae ONLY within their home range. Many of these jellies, such as Aurelia (i.e. moon jellies) actually go beyond tropical settings and they really aren't seen on jellies in cold to temperate waters..

3. So, what are the brittle stars EATING??The authors used a novel new method which basically breaks down the organic components of specific isotopes (Carbon and Nitrogen) and looks for how much of those isotopes is present in the subjects versus that which is provided by the environment.

Long story short: The data indcates that most of the food sources in Ophiocnemis seems to come from PLANKTONIC SOURCES! (i.e. the mesozooplankton) and NOT from the medusae itself and there were not any observations of Ophiocnemis filter feeding (i.e. arms up in the water).

And so the authors suggest that they are what's called KLEPTOPARASITES (a great word-really!). In other words, they take food directly away from the jellyfish out of the mouth or the oral arms, stealing or scavenging food from the jellyfish which are known as big pelagic predators.. What would be called "indirect food sources"...

There are several reports of other brittle stars that practice "kleptoparasitc" behavior.. i.e. moving down into the feeding arms or near the mouth and stealing food directly from the host. Some of it might not be a big deal to the host.. scraps and etc.. but meaningful to the ophiuroids..

Although its not entirely clear HOW these brittle stars get up onto the jellies, one reasonable hypothesis is that they settle there as swimming larvae. Many of the brittle stars observed were tiny (smallest =1.0 mm disk).

Larger medusae seemed to carry a higher "brittle star load" than smaller ones. Its not clear exactly how/WHY certain species are chosen. Whether it is simply the physical dynamic of having a larger medusae that facilitates more larvae to settle or if perhaps there are other cues??

It also turns out, based on further obsevations by others, that this species DOES occur on the sea bottom on its own. So, its possible that as they get larger.. the brittle stars fall/jump/ or otherwise "settle" away from their floating substrate.

Or perhaps the jellies themselves die, as we see here on this unfortunate jelly in Singapore!

Well, one must ask, WHAT does a brittle star get OUT of basically jumping onto a jellyfish as a freshly settled larvae and living on it until it gets too big and falls off??

Obviously, they are getting FOOD. So that's one thing. And to a certain extent they are being PROTECTED..because what better thing to live on that a giant stinging gelatinous mass that eats fish!

but perhaps the most important benefit is DISPERSAL.. that is the species is carried wide and far..

It was suggested that some medusae could carry these brittle stars up to 1000 kilometers from their point of colonization!

The apparent range of possible hosts adds further questions about the life mode and just HOW many different types of Ophiocnemis are present? And how do the different jellies affect how the brittle stars diversify and spread?

So, here is a nice highlight of various wonderful invertebrates observed by NOAA's deep-sea research vessel, the Okeanos Explorer which for all of 2016 and 2017 will be studying the massive marine reserves of American territory in the tropical Pacific!

SPONGES!! Some of the most commonly encountered animals on these Okeanos dives are sponges. Sponges are relatively simple animals that are basically big masses of cells but some of them use specific kinds of materials to create skeletons. Some use calcium carbonate, some use a fiber called spongin..and one group which is seen commonly in the deep-sea: glass or silicon dioxide.

Here's a large one with a thick stalk and a large opening on the "head"

This is a cool one: this is a cladorhizid sponge. Many cladorhizid sponges are predatory and I think this one is as well..

those spines emerging off the edge makes it a deadly deep-sea umbrella!

Here's another one from a different angel from Rose Atoll, about 2525 meters!

This is a glass sponge in the Euplectellidae, which is often identifiable by the unusual "cap" on the top of the sponge.. These are known for having 2 commensal male and female mated shrimps which do not escape from the internal cavity..

I missed the name/identification on this one..but I like to point out that those brown "roots" are actually GLASS. Glass sponges often seem to be growing "living" fiber optic cable and have been studied for their optical properties!

WEIRD CNIDARIANS!!Cnidarians are of course-those animals with stinging cells and radial symmetry. Jellyfish, sea anemones, hydras, hydroids and so on.They account for a huge diversity in deep-sea habitats! This "cosmic jellyfish" has been making the rounds. Its been identified as Benthocodon hyalinus by my colleague Allen Collins at NMFS. It was observed on Utu Seamount at about 3006 meters!!

Its not unusual for us to see a giant hydroid on these dives.. This one identified tentatively as Corymopha

One of the most noteworthy of the cnidarians observed was this Dandelion or benthic siphonophore. Siphonophores are colonial animals which are mostly found swimming though the ocean in long chains which in some instances can be meters long! Familiar species include the painful Portuguese Man o War.

BUT the species in this group live attached to the bottom, apparently with a huge array of feeding tentacles extended.. there's a blog about these waiting to be written! hopefully soon...

Unsurprisingly, some of the most exciting observations on this last cruise were MOLLUSKS! We don't normally see a lot of snails or clams on these cruises..but we made up for it on this dive!

Neopilina, MONOPLACOPHORAN!

Few animals that I know of have what might be considered "holy grail" status. THIS is one of them..

In this case, the mysterious mollusk known as Neopilina! This mysterious mollusk has previously been collected from abyssal and ultrabyssal depths between 4000 and 6000 meters. From both the Atlantic and the Pacific.

These are rarely collected and in the past were perceived as being VERY important to evolutionary or other ecological studies. Basically these animals were regarded as ancient AND ancestral mollusks-the "Ur mollusk" if you will. They inspired a LOT of questions about what they were related to and how other mollusks were related to one another..

But I think this might be the FIRST time an in situ (in place and ALIVE) observation has been made! I admit that this tiny brown limpet thing does not have the same... presence as say some giant octopus or squid, but once you know all the history behind it.. well, I say this with no irony-seeing it alive in its habitat was HISTORIC!!

Octopus! So, of course we are always fond of cephalopods when they turn up! This white translucent octopus species was observed at least twice on the dive at relatively "shallow" depths between 380 and 400 m. This first shot was from Tau seamount.Note that the webs of skin between the arms were translucent!

This one was seen at Rose Atoll at about 393 m and it was investigating a series of little holes and caves.. presumably looking for food..

ECHINODERMS!! So, where MY group is concerned I'm always a little biased and have more imagery than of other groups (not as many corals for example). And because I work on starfishes-there's enough pics that I will get to those in another post!but for now, here's some striking "spiny-skinned" friends that I saw...This funny beast which I think was in the Deimatidae? Note that as with many deep-sea sea cucumbers, the body wall was translucent and we can see the sediment eaten by the animal THROUGH the body wall!

A sea urchin the family Pedinidae I think? Lovely greenish coloration!

A reddish.. echinothuriid urchin? Aka a "pancake" or "tam o shanter" urchin. I've written about these before here. We saw a few different species of these kinds of urchins. But they are difficult to ID from pictures..

MIXED TAXON CRAB + COMBINATION!!

There were at least two interesting cases where we saw crustaceans "team up" with another animal that one does not normally associate.....

1. Decorator crab + cidaroid urchin! This was an odd one. The ROV was observing this cidaroid urchin..and as it changed angles.. it noticed this majiid type "decorator" crab hanging on with its rear legs. We've seen other crabs hanging onto fire urchins in tropical shallow-water habitats as protection-but not seen something like this. Unclear if it is incidental or something that happens regularly...

2. Zoanthid "anemone" PLUS hermit crab! A relationship that has been seen before but no less weird whenever we see it. Basically a sea anemone-like animal called a zoanthid rides and replaces the shell that this hermit crab would normally be wearing..

The crab benefits from the protection and the zoanthid gets driven around by the crab for dispersion, food, etc.. Interesting commensalism!

Over the last 10 days or so since Okeanos Explorer has resumed its ROV-telepresence based exploration of the Phoenix Islands and adjacent areas in the tropical Pacific they've seen some REMARKABLE animals of all kinds, from corals to siphonophores, crabs to ribbon worms, etc... but particularly ECHINODERMS!

Before I get into the cool pix.. remember NOAA OPERATES Okeanos Explorer!! NOAA has been threatened with severe budget cuts. CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSIONAL REP AND TELL THEM THAT NOAA IS AN ESSENTIAL Agency!

Basically, almost all sea cucumbers and indeed most echinoderms are benthic..that is they live entirely on the sea floor and never get into the water column the way fish or jellyfish do.. Yes. Some sea cucumbers can swim but ultimately they return to the bottom.

Pelagothuria is unique because it LIVES SWIMMING in the water column! Similar to the way a jellyfish does. As a result of its strange lifestyle, it has MANY bizarre adaptations and looks unlike most other sea cucumbers much less other echinoderms!

Its not a commonly encountered animal..and we live in a wonderous time that we can see several minutes of HD video of this seldom seen animal swimming by...

Pelagothuria is contrasted with this other swimming sea cucumber which, after landing on the bottom, poops and then takes off! (from that unnamed seamount off Winslow Reef)

2. The strange irregular urchin Phrissocystis! From Polo Seamount, about 2100 m we saw one of the most seldom seen spatangoid urchins known! These are highly evolutionarily derived sea urchins which live by digging through and swallowing sediment looking for food.

Although they are bristling with spines, they are actually quite delicate. One collected many years ago apparently collapsed as soon as it was brought out of the water in the submersible collection box!

3. A stunning new phyrocrinid stalked crinoid! From an unamed seamount in the Phoenix Island chain, this bold and striking stalked crinoid was observed..and ultimately collected after it was identified as a new species by crinoid scientist Chuck Messing (based on a paper by Tunniclife et al.)

It was quite large with an unusual texture to the stalk and the cup...

4. The "jumping" brittle star Ophioplinthaca!

Brittle stars, distant cousins of sea stars, are EVERYWHERE in the ocean. And especially in the deep-sea you can see them inhabiting numerous cracks, crevices and living on corals!

Some are VERY spiny.. such as this species, what I think is called Ophioplinthaca. We've been seeing these ever since the first leg of the Samoa Expedition. They seem to occur on corals with the tissue removed.. possibly by the ophiuroid itself..

Another curiosity is that these seem to "jump" off their perches as soon as the ROV approaches. Whether this is due to light, vibration, the bow wave of the D2 or disturbance in the "ophiuroid force" (NOTE: Ophiuroid force does not exist) is unclear...

There is nominally ONE species present in almost every ocean in the world.. they've been found in the Atlantic, around New Caledonia, near Hawaii and in the Antarctic. Not sure if they've been found in the Indian Ocean.

Interestingly, these were found in astonishing abundance on one of the seamount dives

5a. The Deep-Sea Slime Star HYMENASTER From Titov Seamount was this glorious, glorious deep-sea SLIME STAR, in the genus Hymenaster.

Mostly I call in on starfishes or echinoderm biology..but I do have a broad interest in deep-sea biology. And I just LOVE seeing observations like the one above: a weird animal doing something no one is familiar with!

...BUT of course, our ship and shore-side scientists can't know EVERYTHING. We'll often observe an event, many of us make note of it in case we see it again and often times we'll move on.... forgetting about it until such a time when the observation comes up again.

ONE such observation was one from 2014 on the Atlantic Physalia Seamount wherein we observed a sea spider in the genus Colossendeis sp. with its proboscis (that's the long cigar shaped feeding tube) stuckINTO into this hydroid (an animal similar to a Hydra from freshwater)! Was this feeding? Was it NEW?

Physalia Seamount in the North Atlantic

A brief into: Sea spiders are not spiders. They belong to a group known as the Pycnogonids (also called the pantopods) which are mysterious arthropods. Some folks consider them distantly related to the greater group of arachnids whereas others think they are even more unusual...

Many live in shallow water but are never seen (hidden and small)... but that's NOT a problem with the deep-sea and Antarctic species! There's one frequently encountered genus: Colossendeis which is one of the largest known sea spiders reaching a leg-to-leg diameter of over 50 cm! that's almost a FOOT and a HALF!

Most members of Colossendeis live in the proper deep ocean abyss: roughly 1000 to 5000 m and also in Antarctica where the cold-waters allow them to occur in relatively shallow water settings.

Note also the sizeable cigar shaped projection at the top end! That's called the PROBOSCIS! That will be important later! That is presumably what they use to feed.

Unfortunately, there is relatively little information known about sea spiders..... And the deep-sea species? Even less!

So, were the observations something unusual? Has science encountered something like that before??

They observed the same genus, Colossendeis, but at least two species, C. gigas and C. japonica feeding on commonly encountered sea anemones in the deeps of Monterey Canyon.

Braby's paper reveals that only Colossendeis in Antarctica had been observed feeding. These animals fed on limpets and bristle worms and in 1999 sea spiders were observed feeding on sea anemones

Braby et al.'s observations were the first for deep-sea Colossendeis (as opposed to Antarctic) species. Her team's work focused on their feeding on the deep-sea "pom pom anemone"Liponema brevicornis, an unusual sea anemone which literally "rolls" along the bottom of the deep-sea in a manner similar to a tumbleweed!

After the last 2017 Okeanos leg in the Phoenix Islands, I rounded up a BUNCH of the sea spider-feeding observations and decided to share them here as a comparison! Who knows? perhaps it will inspire a further paper!

Remember that NOAA's Okeanos Explorer program has captured these images and made them available for EVERYONE's enjoyment! Please remember that the next time someone talks about government funded science!

Pacific Observations! Over the last few weeks of the Phoenix Island expedition, we saw a BOUNTY of sea spider feeding observations! Winslow Reef: This one had its proboscis firmly ensconced into this flytrap anemone and was apparently sucking something out of it! The rather lethargic looking appearance is likely the result of being on the receiving end of whatever is going on here...

And ANOTHER on Winslow Reef! that was QUITE a dive! Here's another flytrap anemone with a sea spider attacking it! As we saw earlier from Monterey Canyon, sea anemones and other cnidarians seem to be one kind of preferred food!

Baker Island we saw one attacking what was identified as a cup coral...The proboscis seemed to be "drinking" pretty heavily on this one...

Howland Island.....and just for good measure they saw this one crawling over a glass sponge

More Atlantic Feeding? Here we had a sea spider in the Atlantic Nygren Canyon which has been identified as Pallenopsis (thanks to Bonnie Bain), climbing and possibly feeding on this sea pen.So, unfortunately I'm not really a sea spider taxonomist, so beyond the genus Colossendeis, I'm not sure how many species we are looking at here..but images such as this inspire many questions: Is predation specific to species? Or generalized? How significant are these events to the ecosystem?Do sea spiders attack the big colonial corals as well?

The Okeanos Explorer was surveying Jarvis Island in the central Pacific at a depth of about 400 to 500 m. They were watching a tiny squid swimming through a thicket of deep-sea "bushes" composed of hydroids and worm tubes, covered by many, MANY animals including brittle stars!

Most times we see brittle stars, they have their arms up in the water, presumably filter feeding... Brittle stars are frequently numerous as I've written about here.

The tiny squid (apparently in the genus Abralia (as identified by Mike Vecchione at NMFS) was moving along its merry way..when suddenly.... (at 0:25 to 0:30) the tiny squid is knocked around and then CAUGHT by the arm of one of the ophiothricid brittle stars!!!

Yes! Most of us don't think of sea stars OR brittle stars as capturing fast moving or SWIMMING prey! Strangely enough, THIS WAS CAUGHT ONCE BEFORE!!

Once, back in 1996 at the San Francisco International Echinoderm Conference Dr. Steve Stancyk and C. Muir at the University of South Carolina and Dr. Toshihiko Fujita of the National Science Museum in Tokyo presented some fascinating data showing the very abundant deep-sea brittle star Ophiura sarsicapturing and then swarming over and DEVOURING fish and shrimp as they got too close to the abundant carpets of brittle stars on the deep-sea bottom!!! Here was my blog post about back in 2008!

I remember seeing the presentation of this talk at San Francisco State University. The room was Standing Room ONLY! EVERYONE had to see the famous video of the brittle stars capturing swimming prey!!

BUT ! Dr. Stancyk has graciously NOW permitted his VIDEO of this event to be put up on Youtube making it AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME!!Basically... at about 4:48, a myctophid fish (and later a squid) gets too close to the "brittle star carpet", gets caught in a loop by the arm, gets DRAGGED down and then overcome by DOZENS of brittle stars!!!

Perhaps the most...striking part of this and the Okeanos Explorer video is how.. BRUTAL the brittle stars are when finally tearing apart their prey. Ophiura sarsi was literally rending those fish and squid apart!

Since I wrote that introductory post in 2008 not only have I learned more about it-but we've now seen it ALIVE all over the Atlantic and the tropical Pacific thanks to the livestream videos of Okeanos Explorer!

During the course of Katie's research she collected a fair amount of cool "anecdotal data" which amounts to singular observations and some other stuff which furthers the "natural history observation" of a starfish about which we know very little! So her observations along with some further observations from the 2017 research legs of the NOAA Okeanos Explorer, some further homework on my part and voila!

Let us learn MORE about the weird starfish Tremaster mirabilis!

1. It eats coral (possibly)Probably one of the BIGGEST questions I had for such a strange looking sea star! As we'll see, this species is seen quite a bit and yet one of the most immediate questions about it seemed elusive!Fortunately Katie Gale was quite lucky and was able to capture and image of this specimen of T. mirabilis taken by the fine people who operate the Remotely Operated Vehicle ROPOS/DFO. Gale's paper cites this image showing our mysterious starfish feeding on CORAL! Specifically the octocoral Acanthogorgia!

Tremaster mirabilis occurs widely around the world and of course, its always possible that there is variation in feeding or that possibly the animal in the picture has somehow been caught doing something completely else that we have no clue about-BUT our best guess is that its feeding. So, we continue on with that notion..

BUT we have THIS image taken on Whaley Seamount during Leg 3 of the Okeanos Explorer mission at 875m!

Could its location on the rock surface be because its near a yummy food source? Another coral predator to add into our understanding of deep-sea coral ecosystems???

2. Time lapse movement and?? This probably seems like a common sense thing-we KNOW starfish move albeit VERY slowly. and can actually show some behavioral complexity (here)Katie nabbed some of this GREAT video showing this species moving around its aquarium and more importantly NOT attacking this sea anemone in the aquarium.This is actually an important point because we know MOST starfish CAN move but they often don't.So, ACTUALLY capturing it doing so gives us some insight into what they do when we aren't watching them..

Katie for example caught THIS unusual variation in posture: Could this be avoidance of the bottom somehow? Filter feeding? Some kind of stress response?

Note in this image that the "skirt" is lifted compared to the in situ Okeanos images below where the animal is flush with the bottom..

What is it doing?? This is a bit of a A mystery.

and on Pau Pau Seamount and elsewhere Tremaster is CRAAZY abundant! Are they moving around to feed? to reproduce? How does all of this come together??? These behavioral bits add to our understanding but also to the mystery!

If we sped the movement of this "constellation" of Tremaster mirabilis up, would we still see no movement? or is it a Times Square of Deep-Sea Starfishes???

3. One species lives in at LEAST THREE Oceans?It USED to be that everything we knew about this species was taken from museum specimens and indeed we are STILL dependent on samples from throughout the world for new records of where many species live.

There is some question about whether or not this one species "Tremaster mirabilis" is actually one species or possibly several 'cryptic' species disguised by the fact that all the individuals observed all appear to be the same.

The external characters vary only slightly and its not unusual for a widely occurring species to demonstrate some... variation throughout its range. However, when we examine dead museum specimens we are often missing data such as color and behavior which can be important. Especially when its range where it lives is at least THREE oceans!Tremaster is a moderately occurring deep-sea species.. occurring roughly between 200 and 600 m

Thanks to submersibles such as Okeanos Explorer we now have VIDEO and ON SITE (in situ) observations of LIVING animals!

Tremaster mirabilis is supposed to be one species..but as you can see there is a SLIGHT difference in body form..

North & Central Atlantic:An image from Nygren Canyon (top) and the lower image from Puerto Rico. Note there's more of a "skirt" around the edge versus the Pacific ones.

Throughout the tropical Pacific

Here's a brilliant deep-orange one seen on the recent Okeanos leg from Jarvis Island..

And interesting brick colored one from Pau Pau seamount

and this interesting lighter colored individual from Baker Island..

Other Records show this species in New Caledonia and throughout the Pacific. I've not yet seen it from the Indian Ocean however..

4. There are Jurassic FossilsAs if dealing with living animals weren't enough, these intriguing beasts show a CLEAR relationship to at least TWO Jurassic fossils!Bear in mind that the Jurassic is quite a LONG time ago. These sea star were living in the world's oceans while dinosaurs roamed the Earth!

5. What does "Tremaster" actually mean? And"brood chambers"??FINALLY! What does the genus "Tremaster" actually MEAN anyway?"aster" is obviously "star" but it turns out "Trema-" refers to "aperture" or OPENING!

When Addison Emery Verrill described this genus in 1880 he made allusion to these FIVE openings present in each interradius! These were one of the distinctive characters he used to diagnose his (then) new genus!! and "mirabilis" of course refers to "wonderful"

Here's a photo of the underside of a Tremaster specimen.. the openings are indicated by yellow circles!

So, as it turns out if you look more CLOSELY at these openings, they are actually OPENINGS into chambers present INSIDE and THROUGH the body wall and open up on the TOP:

Here are images of a dissected individual from the underside showing these openings (i.e. these are close ups of what's in the yellow circles above)

According to the author who described this species (and subsequent literature), there are actually BROODED young in these chambers! Its not clear to me if they are simply embryos or actual juvenile individuals. Strangely enough, these have not been documented..at least not in the literature that I could locate. and I have yet to actually spot them. But perhaps I've simply not been looking at the right ones...Thus, the openings appear to provide an opening for water to circulate into these chambers which could serve any number of purposes.. Possibly to aerate the "brood" chambers? Or perhaps they assist in the degree of arching the dome-like shape is capable of?? Filter feeding? Predation?? One of the great things about science is how it marches on! Its been 9 years (!!) since I wrote that first post and I LOVE that what in addition to what I've learned from reading, there has ALSO been genuine progress in learning NEW information on the biology of these animals.. And one of these days we will more FULLY understand it and its strange signficance!

Also GREAT to see that animals like this INSPIRE! Here is a GREAT illustration of this species by "Cartoon Neuron" on Twitter...

GREETINGS! Last week, a new paper I've literally been working on since I finished my PhD has FINALLY been completed! Its easily my largest monograph at the moment and includes a whopping 14 new species, 3 new genera and a new subfamily!

The paper focuses on a group of tropical shallow/deep goniasterid sea stars which include reef setting genera such as Neoferdina but also seldom studied genera such as Ferdina and their relatives. I actually ended up describing 3 additional new genera and MANY new species!

The whole thing is a lot to unpack.. and so here's some take away lessons that I thought I would share from writing it!

1. Citizen Science & Social Media Made a Significant Contribution! I've talked about this before.. the world is flooded with divers, photographers and interested people with cell phones all over the world! Thanks to a combination of museum collections and divers I was able to identify and describe several new species and even add color variation to poorly known species in the group I published on! Many times these get misidentified as people try to "shoehorn" them into known species in field guides. This new species for example, Neoferdina oni from the Philippines! I actually identified this species based on material collected by the California Academy of Sciences from one of their recent expeditions (such as this one)

I will likely do a separate post on the etymology of these new species a bit later, but the species epithet of this one "oni" represents a horned demon from Japan which alludes to the two spines on each plate along the side!

Images such as this one gave me more insight into how the colors vary in already established species! and provide leads to possible NEW species...

2. The Mesophotic Zone: New studies and new Species! There's a depth region in the ocean that falls just below "coral reef" (~30m) depth but just above the "deep sea" (above 200m).. that's roughly between 100 and 500 feet. More about this area here. and this entire website devoted to this area! This area is also known as the "Twilight Zone" aka the "sub Reef area" and contains a fauna that is related and similar but distinctly different from those seen at the surface. The California Academy of Sciences's research division as well as their Steinhart Aquarium have both been studying this area in the Philippines. In 2015, they collected this lovely beast, (and here was a news account showing it off) which I had also been observing in the Paris collections from areas throughout the Indo-Pacific!I initially identified it as a familiar genus, Neoferdina, but eventually realized it was actually a separate and undescribed genus which I named Bathyferdina!

I've actually been describing Mesophotic Zone starfish for quite a long time. Here was Astrosarkus idipi from many years ago aka the "Great Pumpkin Starfish" and there were several more as well...One important take away message: Describing new species is PART of understanding the biology of a NEW ecosystem. This was the same thing that happened with understanding all of those predatory coral starfish.. new species led to understanding each "character" of a new ecosystem!3. Museums & Travel: Where the New Species Roam Here's a neat new species from the western Indian Ocean-Madagascar and the east coast of South Africa.. Ferdina mena! Identified by the two distinctive bald patches present in each interradius (i.e. the "armpit") of the starfish.

Thanks to the stunning photos of "Optical Allusion" I was even able to find living images of this species in South Africa!

I have a strangely long history with this species.. I identified one of these (mistakenly) for the field guide Coral Reef Animals of the Indo-Pacific by Terry Gosliner, Gary Williams, and Dave Behrens- as Ferdina sadhensis which was known only from Oman.

During one of my recent visits to Paris and the Museum national d'HIstorie naturelle in Paris, I discovered that this wasn't just an odd specimen with the twin bald, red spots in each interradius..it was present on ALL of the specimens collected from a collection made from Madagascar!!

Following this, I was visiting the Iziko Museum in South Africa in 2015 and discovered the SAME species from the east coast of South Africa! Citizen scientists in South Africa also showed me MANY photos of starfishes which confirmed the specimens.

and to return to the citizen science angle.. images on Flickr further showed this species in Mozambique as well as further color and pattern variation of this species from South Africa thanks to photographer Derek Keats and others!

In both cases, these specimens had been collected and sitting in these museums awaiting discover for YEARS. In Paris-2007 and 2010 and from the Iziko Museum collections-in 1986!!!

For one of the new species I had discovered, Paraferdina plakos, I only had one or two individuals on which to base my new species description. Were they the same? Was it variation? How do different individuals differ from one another? Are the defining characters the same across the species range?

SO, I took advantage of some aspects of the internet which I usually list as pet peeves...

1. Misidentified species made by people who don't want/need to figure out the correct species2. Pictures of species collected by Internet aquarium and pet shops

I was actually able to make OVER TWENTY OBSERVATIONS of this species misidentified as the common "peppermint star"Fromia monilis!!

This led to ANECDOTAL information about its color and how individuals varied in shape. One or two sites actually were pretty up front about declaring how their specimens had been collected from Sri Lanka, suggesting a further occurrence point for this species.

What does this tell us? Not ONLY are A LOT of new species yet to be discovered but we are ALREADY seeing them sold in the pet trade.. and with no correct identifications by scientists to recognize them, are they endangered? For a species that has just been described we know NOTHING bout its reproductive biology, populations, can they handle the strain of being "fished" for this trade???

In this newly discovered genus and species from New Caledonia, Kanakaster solidus shows these crystalline bodies as a sort of pebbling all over the body surface, which is pretty suggestive of the microlens idea.. but I suppose they could also be incipient or underdeveloped granules which cover the body surface as almost a kind of thick tissue.

from Kankaster solidus, holotype

Whereas, in this species, Kanakaster discus, the crystalline structures are actually arranged in stellate formations rather than simply as granulated pebbling. Much more suggestive of a "lens" type function I would think.. but hard to say without more data.

from Kanakaster discus, holotype

If these ARE lenses? Why do the patterns differ? Some "lenses" are present in shallow-water species whereas others are present in deeper water species! And how are the patterns adaptive? If that's indeed the case?

Many, MORE questions! and probably at least one more post about these newly discovered animals!

This expedition will research the coral habitats around the Johnston Atoll unit of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (PRIMNM) spending about 2.5 weeks performing ROV operations, mapping and exploring the biology and geology of the Johnston Atoll region!

I have been a long-time "shoreside scientist" contributor providing identifications of starfish/sea star identifications as well as whatever knowledge about deep-sea echinoderms (or other animals) I can contribute.

Will you still be live-tweeting your dive?

Unfortunately, I won't be providing quite the same level of social media coverage since I will actually be working ON The ship, but when I can, you'll definitely continue to see me on Twitter. Its going to be busy onboard the Okeanos Explorer-but I will try to tweet as opportunity permits.

But I WILL be tweeting about as many aspects of the experience as I have an opportunity to!

Will you be Answering Questions via Social Media???

Yes! If you leave questions in the comments of my blog or on Twitter/FB (@echinoblog) with #askEchino (along with #Okeanos) I will try to answer your question when I am aboard ship during the live stream. So, I probably won't immediately answer questions until I start the live stream. Questions answered will be at my discretion.

I will share more on my Twitter feed as information becomes available.

1. Forest of the Weird: Land of the Glass Sponges!This was probably the most amazing thing I have seen in awhile! (at least since that Basket Star community in the Marianas a few years ago!)So, the key thing about nearly ALL Of these sponges? Many of them are what's called GLASS SPONGES aka members of the Hexactinellida. That means they have bodies which are made out of silicon oxide!

Here's a highlight video of the discovery-basically water currents ran at an ideal rate at the top of this geologic feature making it IDEAL for what seems to be a huge abundance, if moderate diversity of glass sponge species!

Note also how all of them are turned into the current!! We were in this "forest of the weird" for the remainder of the dive (over an hour) so there was quite a lot of it..

Here's few more that show off the crazy architecture.. These varied in height from one to four feet in height..

2. The Carnivorous Sponge Field

This area was kind of the opposite to the one above. Rather than big and obvious, it was quite dense and discontinuous, being present on one big boulder to another...

But what was amazing was that this was composed of a different type of sponge in the family Cladorhizidiae. (possibly in the genus Asbestopluma..) Cladorhizids are not glass sponges and have physical properties more like what's seen in many other sponges. EXCEPT...

Here..they were present in HUGE densities.. alongside some frond-like bryozoans! and some stoloniferous zoanthids (a sea anemone like cnidarian) These actually seemed to be pretty thin at first but got bigger, longer and thicker as we encountered them!

Yes.. I suppose I'm overhyping them..but that's basically a "killing field" of carnivorous sponges! with these projecting into the

Interestingly, this shot above looks like there might be a snail on one of those sponges..so even more going on!

3. This Amazing Farreid Sponge/Acanthogorgia Wall! Shallow-water dives can be VERY productive but because of the nature of Okeanos Explorer we tend not to do many of them relative to the really deep dives (>1000 m).

The one we did at Johnston Atoll did NOT disappoint!

This large block and several like it had this AMAZING side flanked on one side by sponges in the Farreidae, but then on another side covered by octocorals in the genus Acanthogorgia!

The coral side (Acanthogorgia) was relatively high current...

versus the "sponge side" which was relatively low current...

and many critters were to be found amongst the corals (such as this... sea slug)

3. Astrophiura! the "sea star ophiuroid" Probably one of the MOST memorable observations for me OUTSIDE of the starfishes was this weird little brittle star!

One of the videographers, Bob, saw it adjacent to the base of one of the sponges. And there it was plain as day!

This genus of brittle star was described in the 19th Century by Walter Percy Sladen, the author of the HMS Challenger sea star monograph. He hypothesized that it was some kind of "missing link" between brittle stars and sea stars... (since been disproven)

Here is some imagery of as illustrated by H. Matsumoto.. It has rather famously been shown in echinoderm books as an example of a bizarre form. Its shape is very similar to those caymanostellids and is thought to be an adaptation to lying flush on the substrate..

Astrophiura kawamnrai n. sp.

4. Pumpkin Sized Echinothuriids Sea urchins! This dive started out pretty uneventfully up slope along a cone, resulting in the discovery of a pretty amazing colony of plexaurid corals

As I've mentioned with some of the OTHER high density communities- not only were there corals present but LOTS of other animals living among them..

Basically, these are soft-bodied sea urchins which often have poisonous spines and little walking legs.

But the ones we saw on this peak? just ENORMOUS.

The lasers are 10cm across,(about 4 inches)..so, okay this one is only about 8 inches across

but we panned across to another ledge and found a few more...

This darker brown one ended up being about 2 laser lengths..so about 8 inches across! that's basically the size of a small pumpkin! do they get bigger?

Wikipedia lists the "largest" species at 14 inches (36 cm) but did not elaborate on species..(will need to check). But if that's the upper limit, then 8 inches is definitely monstrous!

5. A deep-sea... NUDIBRANCH??This one was quite a surprise, because I had largely thought that sea slugs were limited to relatively shallow depths, much less PROPER nudibranchs which are overwhelmingly found in nearshore settings.

This looked pretty bigh on camera and was about 5 inches long? when we collected it..

Amazingly, there is one genus of proper nudibranch in not only the Antarctic but in the deep-sea: Bathydoris! I'm not sure quite yet what they eat but will find out!

That's a quick recap of some of the non-sea star events..but I'll post more as opportunity permits! THANK YOU to the crew of the Okeanos Explorer, NOAA and my science team colleagues for inviting my participation!

So, a bit of bookkeeping- yes. I've been writing the blog less regularly. This has been largely a good problem to have: lots of other projects have been keeping me busy.. So, I'm mainly just writing when a good topic strikes me.. but I tweet a LOT more often than I used to.. so you can keep up with new posts that way...

Today.. some interesting etymology: i.e. the origins of scientific names!!!

So, this week: A short feature on FIVE (ish) names of very common sea stars encountered on the Pacific coast of North America!

What's interesting is that MANY of these species were NOT described by Americans or by American scientists. They were described by scientists in Europe! Many of whom probably regarded North America as exotic as Australia or "the Orient"..

But now, thanks to many, MANY field guides, textbooks, scientific studies and citizen science many of these names are practically a household name! But what do they mean? How does the original Latin/Greek break down..especially in the context of its taxonomic history.. HIDDEN SECRETS of the Pacific NW starfish fauna begin!

Who Named Pisaster?: This genus was named by two German biologists in the 1800s, Johannes Müller and Franz Herrmann Troschel, in an important monograph published in 1842, the System der Asteriden which established names for a huge number of the known species at the time.

The name: Descriptions were quite brief at the time and many taxonomists never bothered to include the rationale for the names because scientific names are written in Latin and everyone who was considered educated at the time was already assumed to have KNOWN Latin..

I'll be honest. This one was a bit of a puzzler. The latter half of the name "Pisaster" has an easy enough translation "aster" for star.. but the former half? What did the "Pis-" mean???

Some accounts online suggested that the name meant "fish" but that makes NO sense (sorry Merriam Webster!) As Adam West's Batman would say "NOT SO FAST, old chum...."

Fortunately my former Masters degree advisor Tom Niesen (formerly of San Francisco State University) came through! He pointed out that the name ACTUALLY refers to the Latin for "pea" ... PISIUM!

The genus Pisaster makes reference to the small bead like spines present on the surface of the body!

and what about the species names?Pisaster brevispinus is the easiest. "brevis" and "spinus" aka "brief or short spined" So, the short spined Pisaster. This makes reference to the short spines present on its body, which differ somewhat from the other Pisaster spp..

Pisaster ochraceus: "ochraceus" refers to the color: orange of the species first collected. Again, likely without too much sampling of the other individuals. This species occurs in purple, red and so forth.. So TECHNICALLY... the common name for this species "Ochre stars" which is usually taken as a translation of the scientific "ochraceus" name actually means "pale yellow" (possibly orange) stars

and perhaps one of the biggest mysteries, Pisaster giganteus? This one is a favorite story of mine because it is based entirely on knowing the history of the specimen.

It lives here in the collections of the National Museum of Natural History and it is CRAZY BIG, almost 2 feet across! (sadly, nothing this big will likely ever be encountered in the wild again..)

So, it was quite the monster for its time.

But they clearly had no reference to the greater variation of this species which is in most cases.. nowhere nearly as large as this

This kind of thing is the poster child example for why you need to study variation in a new species..especially if you're going to NAME it based on a characteristic seen only in a single individual!

2. Orthasterias koehleri

Who Named Orthasterias?: The genus was named by Addison Emery Verrill in 1914 who was an American naturalist that named pretty much everything in the Americas in late 19th Century and early 20th Century. He was a bit of a whirlwind who named everything from sea stars to cephalopods!The genus name means: "Straight star" with "ortho" meaning "straight" likely in allusion to the spine series on the body which form regular series and "-asterias" referring to the animal.

Species? Probably what throws people the MOST about this animal is the species name.. "koehleri" and most people always try to find a Latin root for it.. except that its NOT a word that is made out of a Latin adjective!

Interestingly, the species was described in 1897 but the genus, Orthasterias was not described until 1914. So, it was SEVENTEEN YEARS until the modern version of this name (Orthasterias koehleri) came to pass..

3. Evasterias troscheli

Who named it? Another one by Addison Emery Verrill!

Named for? Evasterias is I believe the root "asterias" with the prefix "ev" meaning "primeval" likely alluding to this species resemblance to other Asterias like species.

The species? This one is another one named by some folks in Europe that might not be obvious to people working with the Pacific fauna..

The original name for this was Asterias troscheli and it was named for the aforemntioned German biologist Franz Herrmann Troschel, who worked on fishes and mollusks! A Wikipedia article is here.

4. Stylasterias forreri

Who? Another species placed into a genus named by Addison Emery Verrill in 1914!

What does the name mean? The genus "Stylasterias" has the same root as "stylet" or "stilleto" referring to a "sharp stick" or needle. Plus "-asterias" (for sea star). The "Styl-" prefix alludes to the sharp spines covering the surface.

Who was the species named after? This was another species originally described by a European (in this case, Swiss) worker, Perceval de Loriol in 1887. This was collected and brought to deLoriol's museum by a "M. Forrer" (I'm unsure if "M" is the first initial or shorthand for "Messieur" but that is who the species is named for and was almost certainly described in a vacuum by deLoriol. Basically.. described purely as an object without much if any ecological information.

Again, this is a species which had a name for 30 years before being assigned its new name Stylasterias in 1914!

5. Leptasteriasspp.

Who Named it? Another genus named by Addison Emery Verrill! This time in 1866!

What does the name mean? This one is actually pretty straight forward. There's of course, "-aster" for star and "Leptos" which is from the Greek for "small" or tiny..sort of like the word Lepton.

And this is appropriate given how many of the species are pretty tiny (about the diameter of a silver dollar or 50 cent piece.. or 1.00 euro if that's more your speed).. and some up in Washington can get bigger up to the size of maybe a small cookie..

There are a TON of Leptasterias species of course, both in the Atlantic and the Pacific..but the name was clearly designated BEFORE they realized just how big some of the species got! Leptasterias polaris for example, is easily 1 to 2 feet across!

BONUS. Pycnopodia helianthoides& Rathbunaster californicusPycnopodia is arguably one of the most immediately recognizable species in the world given its size and unique appearance.. and interesting.. it wasn't named all at once!

This species was originally named as Asterias helianthoides and was described by J.F. Brandt, a German naturalist who apparently worked mostly in Russia in 1835 here. Asterias was the name they assigned to practically all sea stars back then.. with some species in different families sharing the same genus. and yeah.. if you looked it up the description is basically two short paragraphs long...in Latin. That's why taxonomy gets such a bad rap in the long run..

The species epithet helianthoides is Greek for "like a sunflower" making the common name Sunflower Star one of the best fitting of all of these older species.

On the other hand.. it wasn't until 1862 when a second biologist, an American named William Stimpson (who described the misnamed "Asterias giganteus" (now Pisaster giganteus) rightly thought that this animal belonged in a new and separate taxonomic category..

Stimpson named it Pycnopodia, which in Greek translates to "pycnos" as dense or thick and "podia" referring to its tube feet.. Hence "Dense Tube feet", almost certainly in reference to its very numerous and abundant podia..

Stimpson was actually SO impressed by this animal that in the original description of the genus, Pycnopodia he actually created a new FAMILY to accomodate it: the Pycnopodiidae. This new family hasn't been widely accepted but hasn't quite been disproven either...

Some common trends then...1. Many of these species were named by Europeans in the 19th Century. Many of them had almost certainly NEVER even been to North America!

2. Many of the genera? Described in the early 20th Century probably in 1914, by Addison Emery Verrill.

3. There were a LOT of names which were based on a bunch of old European guys honoring each other. What you're seeing here doesn't even include ALL of the species that were described. It was typical of a lot of taxonomists from this era to oversplit.. that is designate a new species based on some highly variable detail. These "oversplit" names were often deemed to be redundatt by laterauthors and made obsolete.

4. One important lesson? Try to see some variation in the species before assigning it a name based on that one character!

They can vary in appearance and in some places they are very abundant.. Most species are shallow and occur in temperate tropical habitats. Although many species are five rayed.. some such as L. ciliaris can have seven or more arms. Some species in the tropical Indo-Pacific have very striking patterns and can reach almost 2 feet in diameter!

Luidia ciliaris is found pretty much only in the North Atlantic although it has likely close-relatives in nearby areas. This species is regularly seen by divers in the United Kingdom, France, Spain and etc..

Image from http://www.european-marine-life.org/30/photo-luidia-ciliaris-wb01.php

Today.. Andy Jackson, an underwater photographer grabbed this wonderful time lapse video of the North Atlantic 7 armed sea star Luidia ciliaris IN ACTION! Doing a move through this field of brittle stars!

One might see from Andy's video that the animal was in the process of moving through a field of brittle stars..could the odd surface texture have been caused as a defense? from irritation? stress?

This is why "Natural History" becomes important! and how citizen scientsts, including everyone from divers to intertidal naturalists have something to contribute!

For example, this Twitter thread from July 2017 shows a specimen of Luidia ciliaris washed up on a beach with the"banding" on its arms.. (note arm in front above the person's left hand)

Photo by Chris Orr via Twitter

One person in the thread speculates that the star was not in good health...was it? Possibly just stressed from being washed up?? Certainly, this was idle speculation and it is difficult to know what was going on...

So, I am putting this OUT THERE to let people be aware of it.. and who knows?

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???

Perhaps a pathologist, natural historian, ecologist and more? Might take up an interest... More data and MORE OBSERVATIONS could well help us figure out if this is something to be concerned about..(thanks to Andy Jackson and Bernard Picton!)

So for the last 3 years, I've been lucky. There have been multiple opportunities for me to do field work but more importantly to visit museum all around the world in order to study the animals I love so much! I've been away for up to four months every year for the last few years.

Australia, Japan, South Africa, Paris, Honolulu, San Francisco..and probably more in the years to come..

So, today.. some impressions of common trends that I've observed in honor of today.. TAXONOMY DAY! aka Taxonomy Appreciation Day!

1. Museums Remain THE HUB for discoveries!

I've been in the field plenty of times. Intertidal zones on various continents and islands. Two submersible dives, out on plenty of ships.. but in terms of finding a BUNCH of new species all in one trip?? NOTHING beats a visit to see the collection of a good natural history museum!!

Everything from natural history surveys, research expeditions, to simple donations by well-travelled museum patrons you can find all manner of important specimens that result in new species, rarely found species, juveniles and even specimens showing ecological interactions!

My recent travel has been VERY fruitful. Mainly resulting from recent deep-sea expeditions to exotic lands!

In the MNHN in Paris, their recent expeditions to the Indian Ocean, particularly their expeditions to Madagascar and nearby areas have resulted in a forthcoming paper where I will describe over a dozen new species of goniasterid sea stars! and there were more....

2. When a Good Thing Becomes a Challenge: Space the Ongoing Frontier!So. Here's the thing. A reality of ANY kind of collection. At some point, if it is growing at a healthy clip, EVENTUALLY you will have problems with space.

That is to say.. not enough of it. You have more and more specimens.. and eventually every shelf, every inch of space gets used up.

Its not unusual for some museums to literally inherit a collection from ANOTHER collection, often from universities or other academic institutions, instantly doubling the contents but also the workload and burden on resources.

This is an issue that has come up at EVERY museum collection I have visited!

This especially becomes an issue if you work on big, ungainly shaped animals such as sea stars! Some animals are conveniently small and "stack" conveniently..but others.. not so much.

Museums are often judicious in what they accept..but in other cases they are obliged either legally or scientifically to accept valuable specimens. Sometimes museums are faced with inheriting important historical collections-lots of type specimens, rare or even extinct (non fossil) species..

Solutions are there...new buildings. Fund raising. Remodeling to maximize space! This is an ongoing challenge even in the most modern of institutions with natural history collections (or any kind of museum really) These types of challenges keep a future vision for natural history collections important.

3. Databasing & Cataloging! Making Collections Available to everyone!This is, of course, a natural function of any natural history museum collection.

Keeping track of what's available.. BUT lately there has been a HUGE push to make sure that materials have not only been cataloged and database but ALSO available to the scientific public!

This has been especially important for historically important scientific collections such as the one at Paris, which has specimens that have been around since the 1800s and the time of Lamarck!

Museums have taken to making creative use of volunteers and citizen scientists to help with cataloging specimens. I've seen "cataloging parties" where volunteers help to sort and catalog specimens en masse (simple locality data) into a database leaving the more complex entry tasks to the staff.

But more commonly throughout the museum world I've merely seen that almost EVERYPLACE I've been has uploaded imagery of their collection, making those specimens available to anyone with internet access.

What's interesting is that while some people argue that this is a huge BOON to the community: "Digital images of the specimens will make it MUCH easier for people to see the specimen so we don't need to ship it or so they won't need to visit!"

Others have expressed the opinion that these images will DOOM the museum!"Digital images of the specimens will make it MUCH easier for people to see the specimen so we won't need to ship it or so they won't visit!

At the very least, having to carry along the photocopy or notes of the huge taxonomic monograph was just a huge pain in the ass. Unfortunately, especially for marine invertebrates such as echinoderms the really IMPORTANT taxonomic references tend to be in huge oversized, heavy folios like these...

thanks to the online version of these books I can now carry a global-scale library for starfish taxonomy on my laptop.. almost anywhere in the world! Not everyone has a Smithsonian or Paris-level library.. but now you can.

5. Shipping & Customs! New Challenges!What might surprise many people is just how IMPORTANT shipping and customs regulations are to museum "business."

Specimens regularly ship back and forth between natural history museums, mostly as loans for researchers to study specimens they wouldn't normally be able to study. Specimens would be analogous to rare books being sent back and forth between different libraries so that scholars in different parts of the world can refer to then..

Shipping unfortunately always seems to come with some risk..and more lately. Scientific specimens in preservative run afoul of safety shipping and biosecurity protocols. Many specimens, such as corals, are now protected by international law, making them difficult to ship. and so on and so on...

Undoubtedly.. there are those who would say that nothing I've summarized here is necessarily new...and perhaps to the museum worker or working taxonomist..probably not. But the common travails of the natural history museum to the public are often hidden and I hope this helps to communicate the challenges that these museums face in the 21st Century!

So, apparently back in 2012, the original producer of this video shot this lone sea star out on a South Carolina beach as it was struggling to get back to the ocean, likely due to a mass stranding or some other event which stranded it on the tropical Atlantic beach..

These and other venues reported it with such inaccurate hyperbole as "Incredible moment starfish WALKS down the beach after getting stranded on the sand!!"with the word "INCREDIBLE" being dropped as if this was somehow aliens landing on the Earth for the first time!

But sadly, what was happening here wasn't really THAT momentous and in fact was pretty sad.

There was no information on what was happening, what species this was or the context of this whole thing... So here's my attempt to shed some light on this..

1. What species is this? And how does it live normally?

This is a starfish called Luidia clathrata and these are members of a group of "sand stars" called the Luidiidae. A family with only one genus, Luidia named for a 18th century Welsh naturalist named Edward Lhuyd whose Latin handle (they all had one!) was Luidius. One of his colleagues named this genus of sea stars after him in 1840 a story was born!

This species in the waters of the tropical Atlantic on the US coast.. Florida, South Carolina, etc. are commonly encountered and commonly seen on beaches..2. Seen on BEACHES? Why is THAT??How did this individual end up on the beach? Likely due to a mass stranding following a storm, which I've written about here... But here's a video of such an occurrence featuring many, MANY of this species stranded along the shoreline

3. What makes them so vulnerable? Basically these sea stars don't have a lot of "hold" on the surface because their tube feet are pointed rather than suckered. Their little tube feet are modified to help them efficiently dig into the sand or other sediment both to help them feed and to hide them from potential predators..

BUT when big waves or currents come along.. they can be swept away and taken to hostile environs such as this seashore..

Bear in mind that this species is quite abundant and while its unclear what these "natural disasters" mean for the population of these animals, I wouldn't be surprised if the recovery was relatively quick given how many of them there are..4. What do they look like alive and "normal"???Here is a healthy individual of this species moving naturally underwater, albeit near the beachfrot

5. Why is it sad? So, its literally been months since the original "crawling" video posted but I STILL have this being sent to me with comments about "HOW WONDERFUL IS NATURE OCEAN" or "AMAZING OCEAN CREATURE" etc. etc... when in truth this video exploits this animal desperately trying to get back to the ocean

There's an important consideration here: Sea stars operate using a unique series of tubes in their body called the water vascular system which operates primarily using hydraulic pressure throughout the arms and so forth. This is how they move and operate all of their tube feet and so on...

Many echinoderms DO have a limited ability to tolerate BRIEF periods out of water..but this is essentially the animal with residual water remaining in its Water Vascular System, such as the tube feet and so on..

Fluid is still required for movement AND survival. Water carries oxygen and other necessities, such as food and etc. throughout the body.

So, that long crawl back? is not both a crawl to return to comfort but also a return for SURVIVAL.

Folks who express the "WONDER" over that pic are perhaps extending a... misplaced emotion..

Fortunately the original producers of the video have said repeatedly that they had returned that specimen to the ocean shortly after they shot it. So, good on them. I thank you on behalf of the starfishes!!

So, in the meantime..can we PLEASE let the video go and LOSE all of the sad, misplaced hyperbole about how amazing this is?? Its just painful to watch.

So, for 2018 I am BACK for #POLYCHAETE DAY! So for this year.. a fun topic:POLYCHAETE WORMS THAT SWIM!!

So, #2 to #5 are pelagic taxa.. that is they live exclusively (or mostly) in the 3-dimensional oceanic space ! They generally don't live on the bottom of the ocean floor. and so, they have adaptations which help them to live in this unique and vast area! as we'll see...

5. TOMOPTERIS!

First up are some of my FAVORITE swimming worms! Those in the genus Tomopteris!

These are apparently VERY successful with a widespread distribution all around the world. There are apparently 35 to 50 species in this genus! About 15 of these occur in the subgenus Tomopteris (Johnstonella) which I suspect means there is some contention over how many there are..

BUT I can tell ya' this much! The NAME Tomopteris is Latin for "Split wing" which alludes to the paddles on each of their little legs! and the fact that it is apparently "cut" into two halves..

The family Alciopidae apparently includes about 12 genera, but I believe only a few genera are actually pelagic.. that is free swimming.

Alciopid worms are known or being PREDATORY. They have an ENORMOUS proboscis which are presumably used to feed ON other prey...

and They are known for having ENORMOUS EYES which are complex in a manner analogous to vertebrate eyes with lenses, irises, corneas and such.. So, they actually have well-developed VISION which is thought to assist in prey avoidance..

I'll be honest. There's not much that I can add to this which wasn't already said by MBARI when the species was described:https://www.mbari.org/a-worm-like-no-other/

These are part of a genus of segmented worms called Chaetopterus, most of which aren't actually swimming species.. They kinda look like this: Many of them live in a paper-like tube..This pelagic species was unusal in having swollen segments wich gave it an unusual appearance...And yes..the Latin name epithet "pugaporcinus".. is LITERALLY translated as "Pig Butt" 2. Swima bombaviridis! Swimming bomber worms! and relatives...(the Acrocirridae)So, this is kind of a "two for one" deal because members of this one family of swimming polychaetes, the Acrocirridae actually have TWO very interesting membersHere were the "Squid worms" Teuthidodrilus samae whose very formidable appearance got them a notable write up in National Geographic among other places../ (https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/11/101124-squid-worm-new-species-science-teuthidodrilus-biology/)

Karen Osborn and her associates later discovered ANOTHER member of this group delivered glowing green bombs as a defense mechanism! Here was a nice video of that discovery via California Academy of Sciences & MBARI!

1. EPITOKES! mmm... yummy! FINALLY.. the last category of swimming segmented worms is kind of a mixed bag. This includes worms while swimming which are NOT a specific group and NOT a group of worms that swims its entire life..This is the unusual phenomena in polychaetes known as EPITOKY! This is the reproductive phase for many polychaete worms in which they physically change and shift into a swimming form or mode! these species typically are adapted to bottom living.

Presumably this sudden ability to swim goes hand in hand with dispersal of the reproductive products.

Here for example.. we have an example of a sexually mature worm carrying its products while also swimming! aka engaging in pelagic life mode.

This change in life mode can be a bit of a surprise when your 2 foot long bristle worms are suddenly swimming around like giant snakes!

In the Indo-Pacific region, there are HUGE numbers of these epitokes swimming around in the water column and apparently, they are QUITE tasty..

Although prepared in many different ways, sometimes its apparently best to just have them on toast!

from the original blog: http://mrlavalava.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_archive.html

Have I missed other examples of "proper" swimming polychaetes? Almost certainly! Here for example is Poebius meseres which apparently feeds on marine snow..

and of course.. MBARI has a GREAT video that samples a bunch of them in spectacular fashion..Enjoy the 2018 Polychaete Day!